by Nat Burns
“And somewhat happier,” she added, lifting the menu. “I guess we really do need to put our thinking caps on, Denni.”
“I know,” I grumbled. I realized that maybe my attraction to Bone had been throwing me off my game. I needed to focus on finding the perp, not on how my heart sped up every time Bone came near me.
“What’s good here?” she asked, eyes scanning the offerings.
“Alligator, snake, bear meat…”
She lifted her eyes and I saw merriment sprout in them. “Sounds delicious,” she said. “They have anything that doesn’t walk?”
“Is this your first time in Louisiana?”
She nodded. “Yep. I like it…a lot. I’ll be back, I’m sure.”
“Hello, ladies. Looks like you were fighting the fire too,” our waitress said as she approached our table. She was unfamiliar to me and I wondered if this was the woman Solange had phoned me about. I snuck a quick glance at John Clyde, but he was still staring into his drink. Patty was on her cell, no doubt talking to Yolanda or maybe checking on Ammie and Kissy.
“Yes, we were,” Bone said.
“It’s a terrible thing. I’m just glad no one got hurt,” she said, taking her order pad from her pocket. “What can I get you gals to drink?”
I ordered a Jack and Coke and Bone ordered iced tea.
“I think she’s the one Solange was talking about this afternoon,” I told Bone once she had gone to fetch our drinks.
“Ah, John Clyde’s girlfriend,” she said, turning so she could better see John Clyde and Patty.
I studied the waitress as she walked back toward us. She fit the description Solange had shared. She was a bottle blond, the hair teased a little on top. It was pulled back from her face, but she had short bangs and the bottom of her hair was long enough to froth around her shoulder. She wore a lot of cosmetics, but they were skillfully applied. Overall, she was very attractive. Not my type, but nice-looking.
“I don’t believe I remember you,” I said as she placed my drink in front of me. “Are you new to the area?”
She smiled, as if happy anyone would show her some personal attention. “I am, but my family lived here. I moved back here from California, Modesto, oh, about nine months ago.”
“So you like it here?” Bone asked.
“Yes, very much so.” I thought I saw her eyes dart toward John Clyde, but I couldn’t be sure.
I extended my hand. “Glad to hear that. My name is Denni Hope. I’m a friend of the Price family.”
She took my hand and shook it, smiling sweetly. “Rina Beaudreaux. Nice to meet you, Denni.”
“This is my friend, Bone Corcaran,” I said.
Rina shook Bone’s hand. “Bone, now isn’t that an unusual name?”
“It’s short for Bonita,” Bone offered.
Rina watched Bone for some time, her head tilted to one side. Mentally shaking herself, she asked for our orders.
“This is gonna be a real financial blow for John Clyde and Patty, huh?” Bone said after Rina walked away.
I sighed and sat back. “I’m afraid so. You know farms work on a shoestring budget these days. Especially if they aren’t big enough to participate in government subsidies.”
“What will they do?” Bone asked, her eyes worried.
“I don’t know,” I said as I sucked up some of my drink. “Seems like this bad guy may have gotten exactly what he wanted.”
“We can’t let that happen, Denni,” Bone said urgently, leaning toward me to emphasize her point. “You know it’s just wrong. We have got to get to the bottom of this.”
“I agree, but how?”
Bone’s eyes widened as they flicked to something behind me.
I spun around and saw the imposing figure of Officer Armbruster Seychelles standing in the Bay Sally’s entryway. He was wearing sunglasses beneath his dark blue wide-brimmed hat and even wore a dark blue tie with his short-sleeved uniform blues. Spying me, he walked over, removing his sunglasses. He carried a large manila envelope pressed under his arm, against his ramrod-straight side.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I stood and greeted him. “Officer Seychelles! How are you?”
He shook my hand. “I’m good. I thought I’d drop these by, out at Fortune, and Ammie told me where you were.” He handed me the envelope. “I saw what happened. Man, this is bad business,” he added, shaking his head from side to side.
“I know. Bob Tunney is watching the shed tonight and the fire inspector will be out first thing in the morning. Here, sit.” I pulled a chair out.
“I sure hope they find a clue that tells us something,” he responded as he took a seat and removed his hat. “I’m getting tired of chasing invisible men.”
“Oh, sorry. Officer Seychelles, this is Bone Corcaran. She’s a Richmond officer here helping out.”
He shifted his hat and took Bone’s hand. “Virginia? You’re a long way from home.”
She laughed. “Out of my jurisdiction, you mean? I’m just here on vacation. Helping out an old friend.”
Seychelles nodded.
“Is this the file?” I asked, opening the clasp of the envelope.
“Such as it is,” he said, sighing.
Rina appeared at our side. “Hello, Officer, what can I get for you?”
“Just soda water with lime,” he told her.
“You won’t find much there,” he warned me as she walked off. “The forensic guys found some partials on one plane of the wood but are having a hard time matching it to anyone in the system. We’ll get there, though. At least we’ll keep trying. Anything new on your end?”
“Nope, just the fire. Kinda sidetracked us.”
“I did some online searching and looks like the Prices own the land free and clear,” Bone said. “I don’t see anything that would point to blackmail. We can’t even pinpoint a motive.”
“Have you heard any gossip about Megs?” I asked Officer Seychelles.
He thought a minute as he accepted his soda and thanked Rina, who hovered for just a bit. “No, can’t say as I have. And she was pretty active around here, serving on this board and that. Never heard a peep of malicious news about her.” He laughed. “Just about everyone else, but not her. Why do you ask?”
“The grave being vandalized.”
“Ahh, yes. No, nothing.”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Suppose she was like, having an affair or something?”
He frowned. “Megs Price? I don’t think so, Miss Hope. She just wasn’t that kind. You know what I mean?”
“Exactly! That means she would have had more to lose if people found out,” I persisted.
“How would that play into the events that have been happening?” Bone asked.
I slumped back. “Yeah, that’s where I get screwed up too,” I admitted. “I mean, she is dead. Seems like that would be the end of anything like that.”
Officer Seychelles finished his soda in one long slurp. He stood. “I guess I’ll get along. I’ll be out at the fire scene in the morning, after the fire inspector leaves. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“You’re a fucking jackass, is what!” shouted a man at the bar. We all whirled and I saw it was Jimmy Thibideaux. He was standing nose to nose with John Clyde, and they looked ready to go at it. The restaurant patrons stilled into silence. Odalia leapt to her feet, and Seychelles clapped his hat on his head and strode toward the bar area. Odalia, seeing the police officer, lowered herself back into her chair, eyes studying the situation.
“I’m not selling you squat,” John Clyde bellowed drunkenly.
“No, you’d rather turn it into something from War of the Worlds instead. I ain’t about to look at that all day long,” Jimmy said in a low hiss.
“Like you got money to buy. Besides, you’d care for it just like you care for what you got now. Fields fallow, crops failing…all while you fish the days away,” John Clyde sneered.
Patty stood against one wall, eyes wide and one palm pressed to
her mouth, as Jimmy lashed out and punched John Clyde in the face, sending him reeling. John Clyde fell to the wooden floor and one hand came up to cup his cheek. Blood trickled from one nostril. The fire of fury lit in his eyes and he leapt to his feet.
“What’s going on here?” Officer Seychelles said, stepping between the two men.
John Clyde swayed drunkenly, but his hands were still clasped into raised fists, ready to do battle. Jimmy stood back, panting and obviously trying to calm himself. As if suddenly realizing they had an audience, John Clyde glanced around sheepishly. “It’s a private matter, Buster. Nothing for you to be worried about.”
“Do you want to press charges, John Clyde? You have a roomful of witnesses who saw him hit you.”
John Clyde’s eyes fell on Jimmy, and they stared at one another for a good while as everyone waited. “No, there’s no need,” he said finally.
Seychelles took a step back. “All right then. You two shake hands and work through whatever you have to work through, but without fists.”
Jimmy extended his hand as his other hand pushed a stray hank of hair behind his ear. John Clyde took the hand briefly and the two parted.
Officer Seychelles tipped his hat to Odalia and left the restaurant. Jimmy was close on his heels. At the door, Jimmy paused and looked back at John Clyde, who was still watching him.
“Just don’t sell to anyone but me,” he muttered as he went through the door. “Taylor ain’t one of us no more.”
The buzz of restaurant conversation resumed, and Patty moved closer to her brother. “John Clyde? What was Jimmy talking about? Are you trying to sell Daddy’s farm?”
John Clyde was dabbing at his bleeding nose with a paper napkin. He grimaced in irritation. “Hell no, though I should after all that’s been happening to us. I hate to admit it, but I’m really starting to hate that place.”
“John Clyde, no! Don’t say that. Please.” Tears made new paths through the sooty grime on her cheeks.
I sighed and pulled Patty close. I so hated to see a woman weep, and Patty, especially, had had more than her fair share of grief the past few days. “Don’t cry, Patty. It’ll be okay. He’s not going to sell the farm.” I glared at him, daring him to refute my statement.
“Look,” Bone said, taking Patty’s arm and guiding her toward the door. “We need to get you home. You’ve had just about enough of today. Let’s get some shut-eye and see if tomorrow will be better.”
Patty nodded sullenly and allowed us to lead her out the door and to the rental car. She sat between Bone and me and was very quiet most of the way home. Her breath hitched in a quiet sob when we passed the crisped, smoldering hulk where the shed had been.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ammie was relieved to see Patty. And horrified. She rushed Patty upstairs and into a warm bath right away. Bone and I just looked at one another and shrugged. We were filthy as well and decided our own showers were in order.
Later, dressed for bed and with my back salved and bandaged by Ammie, I moseyed to the sitting room. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was waiting for Bone. I just knew she would come to me, and after a short while, she did. She waggled her cigarette case at me and grinned as she stepped out of the sitting room toward the porch. Our porch, as I had come to think of it in my mind.
The night was ripe and rich, filled with the fecund scents of summer laced with the acrid dregs of wood smoke from the shed fire. Lights from the cargo derricks on Sabine Lake provided focus for the night’s energy and distant stars beckoned overhead. We sat in our usual chairs, and Bone smoked as I enjoyed the night.
“Like Rina, I’m just glad no one got hurt,” Bone said sometime later, when her cigarette bore a drooping tube of ash. She leaned to flick it into the ashtray.
I sighed. “I don’t want to be doing this,” I admitted slowly. “I’m not sure why I agreed. Family issues are always such a pain. The drama, the confrontations…a pain.”
“Some say that’s why lesbian and gay people prefer to create their own new families,” Bone said. She crossed her legs and I admired the slim grace of her leg below her cotton shorts. “I know why you came here, though.”
I eyed her quizzically. “You do, huh?”
“Sure. You thought there might be a chance for you and Patty to get together again. You’d come in like a white knight on your shiny white horse and make everything all better.” She crushed out her cigarette and watched me with her merry eyes.
I started to protest. I knew I would be justified in doing so, but the truth of the matter was her words struck a nugget of validity somewhere deep inside. Was that why I had agreed to come? Perhaps.
“How do you feel about that?” I found myself asking.
“Oh, ho,” she chortled. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“So that means you aren’t going to answer my question?”
She considered my words a moment. “I feel that this trip here was a defining moment for you. You will now either get on with your life or simply decide you can’t live without her.”
“Ah.” I nodded sagely. “I think that has already happened.”
“And what did you decide?” she asked, head tilting to one side in that adorable way she had. Light from the lone farm streetlight caught the gemstone in her tiny nose jewelry and made it glow. I fell in love with her at that exact moment. My heart stopped for a few seconds with the wonder of it.
“Denni? Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’ll tell you later…after this mess is over with.”
“Okay. I’m going to hold you to that,” she responded with a teasing grin.
A sound from inside drew our attention, and Ammie appeared in the doorway. “I thought I heard talking out here. You mind if I come sit a spell?”
“Heck no,” I said. “The more the merrier. How is Patty?”
Ammie sighed deeply as she pulled one of the padded porch chairs closer to us and seated herself. “This has been a sad, sad day for that girl. Losing her mama about did her in and now she is dealing with all this evilness. I don’t rightly know what will become of this family now.”
“Is she able to sleep?” Bone asked quietly in a worried tone.
“She brought the baby into the bed with her. It seemed to ease her somewhat. That other one is working at the hospital all night so Kissy is a comfort.”
“Good,” I said. “I think the fight between John Clyde and Jimmy was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She was holding it together pretty well until then.”
“Have you heard anything about John Clyde wanting to sell the farm, Ammie?” Bone asked.
“Can’t say as I have,” Ammie said with a small shake of her head. “Did he say that? I never would have thought he would do such as that.”
“Jimmy seemed to think so,” I responded. “That’s what the fight was about. That’s what got Patty so upset too, the idea that he might.”
Ammie grunted and stared at the lights on Sabine Lake. “Don’t that beat all,” she muttered. “Maybe there is developers wanting to buy up the land.”
“Jimmy did say something about the land looking like War of the Worlds. Maybe he meant an amusement park…” I mused.
“Wow!” Bone exclaimed. “That threw me at first, but I bet that’s it, exactly.”
“But that doesn’t explain why all these malicious things have been happening,” I added.
Silence fell as we three pondered this truth. Tree frogs had recently started up again, and they graced us with a chorus of song to accompany the silence.
I was thinking about when I needed to return back home. About how I would go back to my empty apartment and take up my job pretty much right where I’d left off. Did that life make me happy? Fulfill me? Sadly enough, I was realizing that it didn’t, no matter how much I pretended otherwise.
“Well, ladies, I’m done in. I think I’ll call it a night. Y’all sleep well and don’t let them bedbugs bite.” Ammie rose and straightened her shirt.
“’Night, Ammie. You sleep well too,” I said.
“See you the morning, Ammie,” Bone said.
Ammie went inside and through the house to get her bag, then out the front. She hailed us again briefly as she passed by outside the porch.
“Where does she live?” Bone inquired eyes on the retreating figure.
I stood and pulled Bone to her feet. I directed her gaze with a forefinger. “See that little white light over there…at the end of that short stand of cane? That’s her house.”
“Oh my, so she walks here every day.”
“Yep and has for about thirty years.”
“Does she have a family there waiting for her tonight?”
“Ammie never had children of her own, and that may be why she considers the Price kids hers. She’s raised them since birth. She had a husband, Erwin Mose, but he passed from a brain tumor when Patty was about twelve.”
“She’s quite an amazing woman, isn’t she?” Bone said.
“That she is,” I agreed readily. I was studying Bone’s freckled cheeks in the light from outside. Part of her face was in shadow, but her one lit eye told me she was looking at me as well. I moved closer to her, feeling the aura of her essence press against me. I breathed in her sweet, fruity fragrance and felt lightheaded. She moved toward me and I welcomed her into my arms. Our noses touched, then our foreheads, then our lips in the most chaste of ways as we breathed in one another, experienced the spiritual being of one another.
Then, too soon, it was over.
“Goodnight, Denni dear. Sleep well and I will see you in the morning.”
I watched her walk away, an ache piercing my heart.
DAY FIVE
Chapter Twenty-Six
Breakfast was a subdued affair. It seemed everyone, from Ammie down to Kissy, was somber and lost in their own thoughts. Even Human was lazy and yawning. I found myself in that magical realm suffused with the first flush of new love. Nothing could get me too down, although the family’s sadness did weigh heavy on my heart. I pondered the future of Fortune Farm as I ate a stack of Ammie’s lighter than air pancakes.
